Tag Archives: smoothie

This is a great shake for anyone, but especially athletes as it contains dates (many runners and bikers eat dates on their long runs), and Maca Powder which is considered a Superfood because it not only has a positive effect on hormones, but also increases energy levels and stamina. Health benefits aside, I love this shake! It’s almost like having a milk shake. It’s important to enjoy the foods we eat. I love when the shakes about done, but there are some tiny bits and pieces of the dates that have sunk to the bottom. They’re sweet and chewy.

And a word of advice on the dates. I buy mine at Costco in the produce section, as that’s where I find them for the best price, and unless used within a week or so, should be stored in the fridge, but I will take out the 4 I need for this recipe the morning of, put them in a baggie and let them sit out for a couple of hours until I’m ready to make my shake, because my blender has an easier time blending them up when they’re at room temperature. And I have a high power blender.

Optional: 1/2 frozen açaí packet (only use 1/2 c ice if you use this option…also, açaí will change the color and make it look more chocolatey)

Place in high power blender, milk first, and blend until smooth.

*Maca Powder: of the cruciferous family (like broccoli), and is considered a Super Food. Grown in the mountains of South America, Maca has a positive effect on hormone balance, energy levels, and is a health booster.

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For those of you who follow me on instagram(elisa_realfoodsmom), you’ll recognize this recipe from a post I did last week.

I found this powdered peanut butter on sale at Sprouts and picked it up when I saw there were only three ingredients and no refined sugar (peanuts, salt and coconut sugar, which is unrefined).

Since then we’ve made multiple batches of peanut butter and banana protein shakes! You could also sub the powdered stuff for all natural peanut butter, 1:1 ratio (if you’re watching calories though, the powdered is the way to go).

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I’ve been playing around with my green smoothie recipe, wanting to use both chia seeds and spirulina powder as they have so many health benefits. The tricky part is coming up with a recipe that tastes good when spirulina powder is added. But after playing around a bit, I found one that is delicious and my kids think so too! This recipe makes about 24 oz which means it makes just enough for me for breakfast :).

Pour water into high power blender and add chia seeds. Allow the chia seeds to soak for a few minutes, and in the meantime gather and prep your other ingredients. Add spirulina, greens and carrots and blend until combined, about 10 seconds. Add the remaining ingredients and blend on medium power, until smooth (I take my blendtec through two full cycles of blending to get it to the smooth consistency I like). Drink immediately.

*chia seeds get thick and gel-like when they sit in liquid, so if you don’t drink this all right away, store it in a jar in the fridge and before drinking, give it a shake.

-Why a “power” green smoothie

chia seeds are considered a super food, high in omega-3 fat, which is something most people don’t get in their typical diet unless they’re regularly eating fish or taking fish oil, also a good source of protein and fiber as well as vitamins and minerals

spirulina powder is an algae, fresh water plant, and is also a super food. It is full of minerals and vitamins and is a good source of protein

lemons are alkaline and are a cleansing food, also high in vitamin c and antioxidants

bananas are high in potassium and are especially a great food to consume before or after exercising. Good source of vitamins, minerals and fiber

blueberries are very high in antioxidants and a good source of vitamin c

spinach, kale and chard are high in fiber and they act as a broom in your body and sweep up and clear out heavy metals and toxins, also high in vitamin A and vitamin C

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It’s that time of year and our peach tree is overwhelmed, and completely weighed down with the amount of fruit that’s growing from it. We picked about 75 last night after dinner, and it barely looks like we touched the tree!

We love to eat peaches raw and we love cobblers and crisps, but you can only make so many cobblers before it gets old…and that’s too much sugar to have regularly. So we’ve been making peach smoothies! (We’ve also been slicing and freezing peaches for later use in smoothies).

My older kids can make smoothies all on their own, and my younger ones love to get involved and help put things in the blender so it’s a fun and tasty activity for the whole family.

Here’s what you’ll need: almond milk (or another milk), plain yogurt (or another yogurt), ice cubes, honey and 4 large, ripe peaches (can use frozen if fresh are not available, but use less ice).

Combine all the ingredients in your blender, starting with the milk, and blend until smooth.

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My husband and I are preparing for our first mini triathlon which will take place in just over a week. We decided that we’d do a month long sugar fast leading up to our triathlon to help us be on top of our game(which is not much of a ‘game’ considering we’re not good swimmers). We still consume natural sugars in fruits and honey, but all refined sugars are out. We’ve been eating a lot more fruit and smoothies and because of that, we’ve come up with a couple new favorite smoothie recipes, one of which is the Pina Colada Smoothie.

You can alter smoothie recipes pretty easily depending on preferences; add more fruit to make it sweeter, more ice or frozen fruits to make it thicker, more liquids to thin it out etc. So that being said, I’ll tell you how I made mine, but just know that you can change things up a bit to make it the way you like it, and if you don’t have an ingredient on hand, like canned pineapple, you can certainly use fresh or frozen, though if you use frozen, you also might want to decrease the amount of ice.

Place all the ingredients you see below, in your blender, starting with your liquids, and blend until smooth. The shredded unsweetened coconut is optional, I personally love it because it gives it a stronger coconut flavor.

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In honor of Valentine’s Day which is this Saturday, here is a recipe roundup of some of our favorite fun, festive, foods we like to eat to celebrate the holiday.

Breakfast Ideas:

Granola with yogurt and some blueberries and strawberries would be delicious, filling and beautiful! Fruit smoothies are considered a treat at our house because usually I make green smoothies :). I don’t mind having a fruit smoothie for breakfast every once in a while, and I think it’s a fun and pretty way to start out Valentine’s Day. We love this Heart Smoothie.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Rolls cooked in a red foil heart pan (pan not pictured below because I forgot to take a pic when we did this on Valentine’s.)

These are always a BIG hit.

Whole wheat pancakes or waffles topped with fresh strawberries or with a strawberry and banana cream cheese sauce.

Lunch Ideas:

I don’t have any pictures of this one but you could make heart shaped sandwiches using a large heart-shaped cookie cutter, served with a side of fresh strawberries. I love this bread recipe.

Dinner Ideas:

We really only do pizza for dinner on Valentine’s. It’s tradition and it’s a family favorite. But on Valentine’s we shape our dough into a heart which makes it a little more festive. Here is the Best whole wheat pizza dough recipe ever!

You can serve it with some of the red(pomegranate) Izze drinks, which are basically sparkling juice.

Dessert Ideas:

There are lots of great Valentine desserts out there, but we try and keep it somewhat wholesome since we know the kids will most likely be getting a bunch of sugary treats at school (we let them pick out a couple of favorites from the valentine’s they bring home and everything else goes in the trash). We love these Peanut Butter Cups . They take a little time to set up in the fridge so make sure you plan ahead.

Another idea is to make heart-shaped Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Cookies. There are not very many cookie recipes out there that taste great with all whole wheat flour, but these are the exception. These whole wheat, honey and maple syrup sweetened cookies are amazing!

My ten-year-old daughter who is in fifth grade, asked if she could make some of these and bring them to her four closest girlfriends for their valentine. I thought it was a brilliant idea and was happy to help. We turned them into giant, heart-shaped cookies…three cookie scoops of dough in each cookie.

We cut out some cardboard squares and covered them in foil so that our giant heart shaped peanut butter cookies wouldn’t break when she transported them to school.

Our weekdays are crazy busy and I knew I wouldn’t have much time to whip them out the day before their school Valentine’s celebrations on Thursday, so we made them the week before, sealed them in quart ziploc bags, and froze them. She will take them out of the freezer Thursday morning and they should be thawed and ready to eat within an hour.

We’ll also be making some chocolate covered strawberries on lollipop sticks this week to bring into my daughter’s first grade class…she’s turning 7 soon and wants to bring these in for her birthday treat to share, which will also be on the Thursday when they celebrate Valentine’s so we thought we’d bring something festive. Happy Love Day!!!

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This fruit smoothie would be perfect for Valentine’s Day breakfast, or with dinner, or as a dessert. It’s pretty and purpley-pinkish (made up word) and there are no added, refined sugars which is always a plus in my book! Smoothies are quick and easy which I love and they’re always a kid-favorite. This recipe calls for frozen mixed berries and frozen strawberries, but you can make this smoothie with just one type and it’ll still taste great. And actually, if you want it more pink colored and less purpley, you can substitute more strawberries for the mixed berries.

Add ingredients to blender, in order, and blend until smooth. Add more milk if too thick. Add more ice/frozen fruit if too thin. Can garnish with fresh strawberry. Serve immediately or refrigerate in glass jar with lid and shake well before serving.

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About two or three years ago, Scott and I tried Indian food for the first time, I think ever. He had a coworker that was from India and gave us restaurant and menu recommendations. We fell in love with Indian food immediately! We’ve recreated a couple of our favorite dishes which we make fairly regularly. Our kids are learning to like it too, some more than others. A couple of them love it, but that’s how a lot of meals are; pleasing seven people, five of which are children, is not an easy thing to do. Many times we’ll serve the dish with Mango Lassi, an Indian smoothie that our children love! It’s a milk and yogurt based smoothie; so this smoothie also helps turn down the heat if you’ve made a dish that’s a bit spicy :). Not that I’ve ever done that.

We make this smoothie when we get Indian take-out as well, about every other month, because sometimes, even though you ask for medium heat, the chef goes overboard and you get something pretty hot, but this smoothie will save the day because it’s milk based and that really helps cool things down.

All you need for this recipe is milk, any kind, though I like unsweetened almond, plain greek yogurt(I love the Fage brand; it’s so thick and creamy), frozen mangos, or fresh with a cup of ice, and a little honey and vanilla.

Put your milk and yogurt in your blender, add everything else and blend until smooth. It’ll be a bit frothy and oh so yummy!

I took the picture below during one of our in-home date nights when we got Indian; we do a lot of in-home date nights since we don’t have a child quite old enough to babysit and babysitters around here are busy! Scott’s eating Butter Chicken and I’m eating Paneer Tikka Masala, with our Mango Lassi we blended up. We could have bought it from the restaurant, and we have before, but I’m pretty sure they sweeten theirs with sugar, and it’s expensive, and this is not and we always have the ingredients on hand so it’s fast and easy. Enjoy!

Mango Lassi

1 c milk (I like almond, but you can use whatever)

1 c plain greek yogurt

2 c frozen mango chunks

1 Tbsp honey (or agave)

1 tsp vanilla

Combine in blender and blend until smooth. Will be a little frothy. Serve immediately. Serves 2-3.

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I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. The end of our summer is here and we’ve been traveling the past two weeks, first to Yellowstone for a couple of days and then to Washington to visit my family. I’m not gonna lie, when I’m visiting with my family, the last thing I want to do is spend time on the computer, and so I don’t. But, we did make and eat lots of good food during my visit and now that my two oldest are back in school full-time and we’re back to a routine, I should be able to handle my weekly posts again and share some of these recipes.

One afternoon on our trip, we took a ferry to an island. There was this cute ‘green’ cafe on the island that stopped at(i’m sure we overwhelmed this little cafe with our party of 12, and 7 of which were children). We got smoothies for all the kids. There was this one called Nuts and Nanas that I loved! So when we got home later that evening, I did some experimenting and came up with a pretty good copy cat. Here are the ingredients: milk(rice, almond, soy or cow are all good), natural peanut butter, ground flax, vanilla and frozen or fresh bananas(with ice).

I freeze my bananas by breaking them into thirds, placing them on a cookie sheet and sticking them in the freezer for an hour or more. Once they’re frozen I go ahead and transfer them to a ziploc bag for longer storage and write the date on the bag with a sharpie. I don’t just dump them all in a ziploc from the beginning because then they really clump and stick together and it’s hard and time consuming to get them unstuck. Whenever stores have the marked down really ripe bananas, I’ll get four or five bunches and freeze them. Now that your banana is cut into thirds, when you make this smoothie, you can just pull out 4-6 chunks(1-2 bananas), depending how sweet you want it.

Typically I use about 12 oz almond milk, 2 bananas(6 frozen chunks), 1/4 c natural peanut butter, 2 Tbsp ground flax and 1 tsp vanilla. When I’m making it for my husband, I’ll also add a scoop or two of vanilla or chocolate protein powder. If you’re using fresh bananas, you’ll also want to add about a cup of ice. Just stick all your ingredients in a high power blender and blend until smooth. I’ve had this for lunch the past couple of days. I love smoothies as meal replacements, especially in the heat of the summer; so light and refreshing!

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This past Saturday, my family and I participated in a family 5k. I ran and everyone else biked…well Jane and Annabelle(our 2 and 4 year old children) sat in the bike trailer my hubby Scott was pulling. It was hot that day. Like 100 degree hot. It wasn’t quite that hot at 8am when we did our run, but it was still pretty warm. My lips got burnt. I don’t like having burnt lips because my mouth and lips feel dry all day and I am always wanting something to cool me down. That night, once the kids had gone to bed, I threw together a really refreshing smoothie that just hit the spot. It was the perfect dessert for the end of a hot day. Light and cold.

Health benefits include, probiotics or good bacteria found in your plain yogurt, plus calcium and protein, and blueberries and strawberries have lots of vitamins. Blueberries are a good antioxidant (cancer fighting agent) and have a really low glycemic load. Strawberries are an excellent source of vitamin c and flavonoids.

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Real Foods Mom

Hello!

I'm Elisa. As a mom of five, I have developed a great appreciation for good health. I know health is not just a matter of luck. I know that our bodies do best when we eat real foods: foods that come from the earth and which haven't been highly processed. This blog will be a means for me to share real food recipes my family enjoys. To read more about my story, click the picture above.....